Caring for and about the soul

Our theme speaker this morning was Thomas Moore (who we found out likes to be called Tom). He was quite concerned about the objectification of people in the 20th century and hoped we’d take a different direction for the 21st century. Scientific materialism really hasn’t fulfilled its promise of solving life’s problems for us. Instead it has turned people into things to be studied, counted, measured, and analyzed statistically rather than personally. When we are reduced to numbers, we lose our humanity.

Moore warned us about the split between religion and secularism. Any split, he told us, manifests as a neurosis. Even setting up virtue as a goal causes a split within the soul since our raw emotions often deviate from healthy, virtuous norms.

I hadn’t heard of Nicholas of Cusa (born in 1402) who wrote a mystical book called Learned Ignorance. Moore shared this interesting quote from him:

A theology that doesn’t name God is important to a theology that does because without it God would not be worshiped as infinite but as a creature and that would be idolatrous.

When we talk about God, we rub up against our ignorance. That ignorance, however, is holy and needs to be honored rather than expunged. This is our post-modern perspective, realizing the limits of our knowing and having to make accommodations for this reality.

Even though Moore was lecturing to us, he didn’t want for us to walk away adopting his ideas uncritically. He claimed that his purpose was not to persuade us of anything. He cautioned us about converting people to anything. Better for us to lead people into their own lives and help them find their own answers – the UU way.

Yet each of us has our own fundamentalisms we want to foist on each other and convert others. Better to let go of such intentions and let the engagement of dialogue do the holy enlightening work all by itself.

During the question and answer period, Moore extolled the value of dreams. We live in story, narrative and image. Artists are skilled at capturing those images and giving them form. The world of the artist is the world of the dreamer. Viewing or listening to art can inspire our own inner life. Paying attention to our inner dream world can enhance our appreciation of art.

So those are a few of the ideas Moore tossed our way without expecting us to agree or disagree. Not sure I can be this detached in my ministry but it does help loosen up my desire to control outcomes!